Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

The Deconversion Biography Genre

I posted a vid on my TektonTV channel today that illustrates one of my favorite themes, which is that some things never change.

I've probably read a couple of couple of dozen "deconversion biographies" by people like John Loftus, Gary Lenaire, Valerie Tarico, and so on. I even wrote about the genre for the Christian Research Journal. It doesn't matter who writes them, they're always the same story in different words. As Nick says in the vid, "They're SOOOOO formulaic!"

Sure, some of that has to do with the natural chronology of a person's life. But when you have so many of these pretending to have claimed the high ground, it's just an annoyance, not a truism. E.g., Gary Lenaire calling his book a "eye opener" when it's filled with garbage like, "The Council of Nicaea voted on the New Testament in 324 AD."

Despite his hot air, John Loftus, the dean of the genre, isn't any better. He's still using arguments that earned him a laugh track on TheologyWeb back in 2006 or so before I caught him with that "fake blog trick." (Don't know that story? Maybe I'll write a blog entry about it.)

Frankly, you could switch the covers on these in the bookstore and I doubt anyone would know the difference. Which is funny, because I'm sure they say that about "conversion" stories.

anyone who reads my conversion story on Doxa will see that reason was obviously an integral part of the process

Are there any Christian bloggers who do not claim to be converted ex-atheists? Your childhood indoctrination was stronger than you know. You were never an atheist. You never had a clue what it means to think like one. This is your real conversion story.

that's pathetic. You are just talking like a fumndie now. Yopu've heard of religious attitudes of "holyer than thou?" you are "More blasphemous than thou."

I was every bit as atheistic as you are or more sol I a true intellectual atheist and y brother even more so, i had Ray Hiunman to guide e in ny thinking. He was a literary genus so I had a from a form of atheism you know nothing about,lit;s gone now but because literature is dying. That's civilization is dying.

you are makimng assumptions abouit something you know nothing of. That fundie mentality realty spurs rebellion for those who see though it. I would never been a Christian if the Lord had arranged for me to meet someone who exhibited a rare form of christianity that is little known, Spirit filled, intellectual, mystic.

I was every bit as atheistic as you are or more sol I a true intellectual atheist

Like I said, you never had a clue what it means. If you did, you would at least have a reasonable understanding of science. You don't just lose all that understanding by changing your belief system. No, you never had it to begin with.

I can't believe you're even asking a question like this. Is this my physics exam? Well, let's see. When spring is in the air, we feel an awakening of the spirit - a renewal of life. But wait - this is supposed to be a physics exam, isn't it? Perhaps you're thinking of the "spring OF the air" that Boyle examined. Or perhaps more to the point, it was the springiness of the air. The relationship between pressure and volume. When you squeeze it down to a smaller volume, the pressure increases. That is to say, it pushes back at you, rather like a spring. I think that's what Boyle was talking about. Not that you'd understand any of the details. Here's a question for you: According to Boyle's law, what happens if you remove the cap from a container of pressurized gas?

Popular posts from this blog

A visitor to the CADRE site recently sent a question about Paul's statement in Acts 20:35 which records Paul as saying, "And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is better to give than to receive'." The reader wanted to know where Jesus said this. This was my answer:

You are correct in noting that this saying of Jesus quoted by Paul is not found anywhere in the four Gospels. My own study Bible says "This is a rare instance of a saying of Jesus not found in the canonical Gospels."

Does the fact that it isn't stated in the Gospels mean that it isn't reliably from the lips of Jesus? I don't think so. The Apolstle John said at the end of his Gospel (John 21:25): "Jesus did many other things as well.If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." Obviously, this is exaggeration for the sake of making a point, but it means that Jesus di…

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents. Therein, I argued that some of the skepticism about the account was unjustified. One argument I made was that the number of children killed in Bethlehem would likely have been no more than 20. Though obviously an act of great evil, the killing of 20 children would be much less likely to be noticed by historians of the time than the slaughter of thousands as later traditions speculated.

In response to the post, Peter Kirby asked a few questions. He has patiently waited my response, continuously delayed by work, family, and the completion of my Acts article. Two of the questions had to do with how the amount of 20 was determined. Others with the omission of the account by Luke and the reliability of the tradition recounted by Macrobius. Peter also mentioned that there were other reasons to doubt the story's historicity beyond just the silence of other sources. I h…

As we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I have been thinking about U2’s song Pride (In the Name of Love) (hereinafter, "Pride"). The song, of course, concerns MLKJr. (According to U2 Sermons, U2 formerly ran a video of MLKJr giving his “I have been to the mountaintop” speech during the playing of the song.) However, the lyrics of Pride are quite apparently not exclusively about MLKJr.

John Lennox is a wonderful spokesman for Christianity. In many ways, he is the one Christian apologist who has acquired the mantle of C.S. Lewis in the way that he is able to take points that are sometimes difficult for those unfamiliar with thinking about Christianity and reduces them to simple arguments using metaphors and examples that anyone can understand.

Since it is the Christmas season, I thought it worthwhile to point a video by Dr. Lennox entitled "Christmas for Doubters." In the video, he responds to the idea that the early Christians believed in the Virgin Birth because they were too ignorant to understand how babies were conceived. Rather, by comparing the accounts of the birth of Jesus with the birth of John the Baptist, Dr. Lennox shows that those who wrote the Gospels understood that the authors of the Gospels did have an understanding of where babies come from, but that they understood that the births of both Jesus and John the Baptist were outside of ordin…

It is understandable that naturalistic thinkers are uneasy with the concept of miracles. So should we all be watchful not to believe too quickly because its easy to get caught up in private reasons and ignore reason itself. Thus has more than one intelligent person been taken by both scams and honest mistakes. By the the same token it is equally a danger that one will remain too long in the skeptical place and become overly committed to doubting everything. From that position the circular reasoning of the naturalist seems so reasonable. There’s never been any proof of miracles before so we can’t accept that there is any now. But that’s only because we keep making the same assumption and thus have always dismissed the evidence that was valid. At this point most atheists will interject the ECREE issue (or ECREP—extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, or “proof”). That would justify the notion of remaining skeptical about miracle evidence even when its good. The…

William Lane Craig remains one of the most erudite and knowledgeable of today's Christian philosophers. His book, Reasonable Faith, has remained one of my favorite Apologetics tools because he lays out many of the Christian claims so clearly and cogently that only the most hardened of skeptics dismisses him or his work as being without weight. Certainly, his writings have led many people to turn their hearts toward Jesus.

We are blessed that Dr. Craig maintains a website also called Reasonable Faith with lots of information that can be accessed free of charge to make a case for Christianity. One of the great features of his website includes a question and answer section where Dr. Craig selects questions that have been addressed to him, and he generally provides really good answers that can help inform all Christians' Apologetics efforts. Unfortunately, this blog has not referenced Dr. Craig's work nearly as often as we ought, but I want to focus on one of the questions …

The manger in which Jesus was laid has colored our imagery of Christmas. A manger, "[i]s a feeding-trough, crib, or open box in a stable designed to hold fodder for livestock.” Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, page 674. Usually, we associate the manger with the animals in the story of Christmas or with Jesus’ perceived poverty. I have several nativity sets which include the manger, along with barn animals. Although I am a nativity set enthusiast, there is a much deeper meaning in the manger.

The manger is mentioned three times in Luke 2. Mary lays Jesus in the manger, the angels tell the shepherds that they will find the Savior by seeking the baby lying in a manger, and then the shepherds in fact find Jesus lying in a manger. Obviously, the repetitive references to the manger are indicative of its significance in Luke’s narrative. As Bible scholar N.T. Wright comments:

[I]t was the feeding-trough, appropriately enough, which was the sign to the shepherds. It told them whic…

“[What] we have today is worse than ignorance of the Bible. It is contempt for it. Just about anyone who quotes the Bible, let alone says it is the source of his or her values, is essentially regarded as a simpleton who is anti-science, anti-intellectual and sexist.” ~ Dennis Prager, Jewish thinker and nationally syndicated talk show host, from I’m Back, Here’s Where I’ve Been.
There is no question that Christianity in the West is under attack from some in the public square. While Christians are still able to worship as they choose and to follow their faith (as long as they do so in private), one would need to be blind to overlook the effort by some to turn the public perception of Christianity as being backwards, ignorant and responsible for hatred. For example, in May 2011 the Huffington Post, the left-leaning Internet website, published an article entitled If You’re a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong by Cenk Uygur wherein Uygur expressed what I cannot doubt is the view of…

Jeff Lowder at Secular Outpost, argues against William Lane Craig's fine tuning argument. His objective is to show that even if the argument is valid it doesn't establish probability for God.

Lowdwer's syllogism of the argument:

1. The life-permitting nature of the universe’s initial conditions is either the result of chance, necessity or design. (Premise)2. It is not the result of chance or necessity. (Premise)3. Therefore, it is the result of design. (From 1 and 2)

This argument is clearly valid, i.e., the conclusion follows from the premises. We want to know the probability of (3). The probability of (3) will depend upon the probability of (2). If we have a very weak degree of belief that (2) is true, say we think Pr(2)=0.25, then, by itself, this argument only warrants the belief Pr(3)=0.25. N.B. I’m not claiming that (2) has an exact numerical probability equal to 0.25; that value is simply an example to illustrate the point.[1]Excluding it as a result of chance means sh…

Lately, I have been listening to a series of lectures by Hubert Dreyfus, Ph.D., a Philosophy professor at U.C. Berekley, concerning the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. The lecture has been very interesting, and while I think that Professor Dreyfus has some questionable interpretations of the Bible, his discussions have given me a greater understanding of Kierkegaard's view of faith. Most importantly, it has helped me clarify in my own mind the use of the illustration of a Knight of Faith and the example of Abraham and Isaac.

The Two Knights of Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher of the 19th Century, can be considered the father of modern existentialism. In his work Fear and Trembling, he wrote about the difference between two types of people whom he called the Knight of Infinite Resignation and the Knight of Faith. In Fear and Trembling, , Kierkegaard identifies Abraham as a Knight of Faith. In his lectures, however, I get the sense that Professor Dreyfus, who I ac…

Who's Visiting Now

Comments Policy

This blog is open to comments by anyone interested provided: (1) the comments are civil, (2) they are on point, and (3) they do not represent efforts by the comment authors to steer readers to long posts on other websites. Additionally, the CADRE members and management reserve the right to call an end to discussions in the comments section for any reason or for no reason. Once the CADRE member has called the conversation, all further comments are subject to immediate deletion, and the individual commenting may be asked to leave. The members of the CADRE reserve the right to delete any posts that do not adhere to these policies without any further explanation.